The Remote Part

EMI; 2002

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I remember when people thought I was going to be the next Radiohead. From morning to night, I was tailed by writers from NME, Mojo and Uncut, who shouted questions from fast-moving vehicles about my favorite soccer players, who I was dating, and what Joy Division meant to me. I spent a day in Trafalgar Square as part of a photo spread with Coldplay's Chris Martin, Travis' Francis Healy, and Placebo's Brian Molko. Then they found out that my guitar skills never progressed beyond "Blister in the Sun" and my falsetto closely approximates the frequency that causes everyone within earshot to lose control of their bowels. Before you could say "Manic Street Preachers," my own personal media circus had left town.

So I can kinda empathize with the boys of Idlewild, who've had to deal with their own fair share of R-head comparisons and Yorkeian accusations. Never mind the fact that the Scottish quartet doesn't sound like anything Radiohead has produced since the anthemic days of The Bends; they're from the UK (Scotland, to be precise), and that's all that it takes to be thrown into a compare-and-contrast table by my limey colleagues. The superbly named Roddy Woomble and his humble bandmates don't want to change the world or open peoples' minds to foreign electronic soundscapes; they just want their songs to be used in episodes of Seventh Heaven.

Because let's get right down to it: Idlewild is a radio band, writing and performing pop/rock songs that are negligibly challenging and designed to be hits. Standard Pitchfork policy says I should therefore spend the next 800 words using my considerable skills in the art of the mock, but you know, I'm not really feeling that salty today. So instead I'll dust off my trusty mainstream listening helmet... let's see, I think it's crammed under my bed here next to those Soundgarden and Oasis discs I couldn't sell back... there it is. Alright, let the popist perspective commence!

Mainstream listening helmet or no, I have to admit that The Remote Part contains a lot of potential alt-rock hits, to these ears. It's one of those albums where each and every song could be a single, be it driving guitar salvos like "A Modern Way of Letting Go" and "(I Am) What I Am Not" or purty falsetto-slide ballads like "American English". Idlewild also has that particular shapeshifting ability to sound like a gaggle of popular bands at once, be it Sugar or Matthew Sweet in their more uppity moments, to Wheat or occasionally-- and unfortunately-- the (sigh) Goo Goo Dolls when they get all sensitive.

Thing is, Idlewild are just too good at what they're doing to get out the critical brass knuckles. The Remote Part might strip away a lot of the instrumental variety of their last take-home product, 100 Broken Windows, but even that album was pretty kiddie-pool shallow when it came to experimentalism. Besides, directness suits Idlewild well, be it the taut melancholy "I Never Wanted", the near-Velveeta-but-not big chorus of "Live in a Hiding Place" or the top-down abandon of the crunchy "Out of Routine".

Now you're probably wondering why, if I'm so high on elements of The Remote Part, the rating still resides in decidedly lukewarm point-system territory. Well, it's not a desperate indie-cred preservation move, honest. No, really. Scout's honor. The point dockage is due here because the album starts to wear thin by the homestretch, with "Century after Century" and "Tell Me Ten Words" shooting past my tolerance for drollness. Blame it on the album being more a collection of singles more than a cohesive whole, kind of like Jay-Z's The Blueprint (world's first Idlewild/Jay-Z comparison, ding!). But the fairly standard fast-song/slow-song dichotomy of the album has serious luster-degrading effects, even over its brief forty-minute runtime.

The Remote Part still makes it up to the sunny side of 5.0, however, if only because a good third of the album has been stuck in my head throughout the rigorous Mitchum listening analysis. Idlewild falls into that select group of rock acts that wouldn't provoke a reflexive stab for the 'scan' button if it came on the radio, and I wouldn't be surprised if "American English" has already hit a few alternative-demographic playlists. Perhaps it's not an album for the more staid, discerning listener (or for those without a mainstream listening helmet), but it's a strong fort in guilty-pleasure territory for those who enjoy a few straight-up, no-frills sticky melodies now and then.